Greetings Captain

You are about to embark on your first mission. At this stage of the operation our primary goal is to gather information. We have little information to offer concerning what you might find. Good luck, and a safe return. (briefing in Starflight 1)

A whole Galaxy

One in 200 stars has habitable Earth-like planets surrounding it - in the galaxy, half a billion stars have Earth-like planets going around them - that's huge, half a billion. So when we look at the night sky, it makes sense that someone is looking back at us. (Michio Kaku)

Star Systems

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be. (Douglas Adams)

Interstellar Travel

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. (Albert Einstein)

Unknown Worlds

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS - EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE. (HAL 9000)

Fieldwork

Herman Melville, in Moby-Dick, spoke for wanderers in all epochs and meridians: "I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas…" Maybe it’s a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds - promising untold opportunities - beckon. (Carl Sagan)

Hostile to life

This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. (Douglas Adams)

Life friendly

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. (Carl Sagan)

Origin of mankind

The time has come for us to admit our insignificance by making discoveries in the infinite unexplored cosmos. Only then shall we realize that we are nothing but ants in the vast state of the universe. And yet our future and our opportunities lie in the universe, where gods promised they would. (Erich von Däniken)

Extrasolar Origin?

Please leave me alone; let me go on to the stars. (Arthur C. Clarke)

Welcome

Hi, my name is Christian (Krischan). This blog is about the development of a new game with the title Extrasolar Origin. It is a space exploration game developed in the free Blitzmax language and uses the miniB3D extension for 3D. I have always dreamed to create my own space game.

In recent years, I have built many tech demos and shared them with the great Blitzbasic community (hi folks!). Many people there told me I should finally create my own game - and I believe it is time to do so.

I registered this domain in 2000, but I have begun seriously last year with the actual game. In the meantime, there is already another game titled Extrasolar where you can explore the surface of the Planet Epsilon Prime with a remote controlled rover. But it has a different focus and I keep the title "Extrasolar Origin" anyway.

It is aimed at the Windows platform, single-player and will be free, perhaps Donationware since I have already spent a lot of money to create this dream. It is only used OpenGL 1.x - without shaders, and should work on most computers. Blitzmax also supports Mac and Linux, so it could also be ported there.

Work in progress updates to the project can be found in the Gallery section. There is no release date because the game is still in a very early stage of development. And I'm working on this game only in my spare time, so please have patience.

About this Blog

I've started on October 14, 2016 with a clean Grav installation, a lot of ideas and a mess of content on my harddisk. I put a lot of work in this blog and I'm glad to have finally begun. Thus, there is now a complete overview on the project instead a bunch of threads in the Blitzbasic community.

This blog exists primarily to provide information on the progress on my game. In addition, it provides valuable information about the solar system, planets, stars and their properties, from the perspective of Moon Base scientists in my game at the beginning. As a pilot of mankinds first interstellar and most advanced Spaceship you must learn what they already know! In addition I have gathered a lot of information and always been trying to locate a possible good descriptive, concise image for each item and - where it makes sense - a video.

Most of the graphics are actual Screenshots of my own Tech Demos. For all other graphics, I tried to figure out the proper credits. If they are wrong or missing please contact me so I can fix it. All the other stuff like the Demos, the Screenshots and the Videos are made by myself. Please don't deeplink them, just link to this blog and it's fine (see below).

I've added to all demos the source code as a separate download link next to the demo download. Additional, there are some code examples with Syntax Highlighting to give you a quick idea how I have solved a particular issue. Sometimes the source is well commented, sometimes very messy. It only represents a development milestone and not the final game. Please take notice that the source is copyrighted as long as I didn't post it to the Blitzbasic Code Archives which would make it Public Domain then. If you want to use the source or parts of it in your own projects please ask, I won't say no but ask me. I've spent a lot of time for this and would like to know who wants to use it.

Most of the description text has been taken from Wikipedia, and has been shortened / partly rewritten for this blog, sometimes with a few satirical notes from the perspective of the future (marked with a smiley). Under each item with information from Wikipedia the original article is linked, in accordance with the license agreements of Wikipedia. There you'll find more information on the particular topic. I want to keep it simple as possible with basic informations only, so if you want to go into more detail visit Wikipedia or other sites like NASA, JPL, ESO and many more.

If you want to use my images please credit me as follows:

Credits

License (optional)

Christian Hart www.extrasolar.de

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

By the way - a different project currently developed in Blitzmax is Christians Remake of an old Amiga RPG: Faerghail which features many information about this project. After Faerghail is finished, Extrasolar Origin is further developed.